It's Cannabis Awareness Week in Georgia and advocates for legalizing marijuana take their message to the State Capitol.

“What we’re trying to do is take marijuana out of the criminal element,” says James Bell, director of Georgia C.A.R.E., an advocacy group for legalizing marijuana.

He says Georgia was among the first states to legalize medical marijuana in 1980, but the federal government stopped providing the only legal source shortly thereafter and the law was never enacted.

Bell is asking lawmakers to form a study committee on legalization of the plant.

“People’s lives and livelihoods are being destroyed because of being arrested for what we feel is not a crime,” he tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

Sharon Ravert says her daughter was a victim.  At the age of 19, she was arrested for possession of a joint and had to use her college savings for her legal fight.

Ravert now leads Georgia Moms for Marijuana.

“Prohibition hasn’t worked and that’s why we want to start the conversation,” she says. “It hasn’t worked and it’s not going to work and we can’t arrest our way out of it.”

Ravert shows off a quilt outside the State Capitol that's traveling its way around the U.S. promoting the legalization of marijuana. Each state is represented.

“It kind of promotes not only ending prohibition but the possibilities for using medical marijuana for the elderly and the sick,” she says.